Constellations
by drunkenCharm
Summary: soulmate au. People aren't born with the name of their destined partner edged across their skin. They receive it throughout their life. Some sooner than others. Bakugou doesn't receive his mark for a long time, and when he does, it's not what he expected.
1. Chapter 1

He's four years old when a child in his kindergarten gets his mark. It's a good sign. The sooner someone gets their mark, the brighter and luckier their future relationship is supposed to be. At least that's what the adults say.

Bakugou can already read his own name. No other kid can read yet. He's able to make out familiar letters on the child's wrist, but the rest of the name remains a mystery. He knows it's a name because all the adults have them. Strange letters gracing their skin. To always remind them of their destiny.

Bakugou doesn't have his mark yet.

He's only four years old but he already feels like he failed a very important task. When other people talk to his mother, they would always mention this circumstance.

"He doesn't have his mark yet? How strange. I thought that boy was special."

With a hand tangled in his mother's skirt he looks up at the strangers. There is anger bubbling up inside his small chest. He believes them, doesn't question it. He's only four years old.

Bakugou stares at the name stretching along the child's skin. There is jealousy gnawing at his young heart. Mother always told him what a bright boy he is, what a special child he is. And yet, he has no mark. Other children and the caretakers gather around the young boy, who is crying. The name appeared of a sudden. He was playing, and then there were dark blotches on his wrist. The caretakers try to calm him down, tell him what a wonderful thing this is, but the boy is crying. He doesn't recognize it as his wrist. It looks odd to him.

From now on, it's a shared wrist. For people to run their fingers over, to muse who the other person could be, to build a future made out of cloud castles.

Bakugou stares at his own wrists. They are clean. Pale skin with fine branching of blueish veins.

No mark to be seen.

He envies the child, who is surrounded by people comforting him. He has never felt such anger before.

Bakugou is four years old when he develops a quirk. It happens only a few weeks after that child got his mark, and it soothes the ugly jealousy that built a nest inside his chest. Now people gather around him and tell him what an amazing quirk he possesses. That he can become a pro hero with this. Bakugou beams up at the faces surrounding him. He is happy. Soon after, all the other kids get their quirks. But none is as special as Bakugou's own.

His friend, Midoriya, who he often spends time with because they live in the same neighborhood, hasn't developed a quirk yet. He might even stay quirkless. That's what the adults usher behind the cover of their hands when the small boy isn't around. Bakugou doesn't grasp the whole concept yet, but he knows having a quirk is good, and not having a quirk is bad.

He has a quirk. A very good quirk. Midoriya doesn't. He is different and not as special as Bakugou.

Just like Bakugou wasn't special anymore when that child received his mark.

"He's just different from you, Katsuki," his mother says. But he sees the way the corners of her mouth pull down. It's not just about being different. It's about being a disappointment.

He is different from his friend. Bakugou is better than him.

 **ooo**

Bakugou is ten years old when a boy in class mocks him for his unmarked wrist. Almost all of the other kids have their mark by now. It's like a guidance. It implies they have a future. The ash blond boy who is still a bit small for his age blasts aside his own class desk and tackles the imprudent child. It earns him a hastily written note and a suspension from school. His mother is furious. She yells. Bakugou yells back.

He spends the rest of the day in his room, staring outside the window and down onto the street. Midoriya is playing with the other children. A game Bakugou can't join in.

At least he isn't quirkless.

 **ooo**

"Are you okay?"

Bakugou stares at the hand reaching out to him. He's soaked in the river's water, down to the bone. Despite the warmth of a summer's day the water is cold. The wrists of his childhood friend are clean, there is no name crawling across the skin that is slightly darker than his own. They're just like Bakugou's.

He lifts his head to look Midoriya in the eyes. The boy seems genuinely concerned for him. He even tells him that it's okay to cry. But it's not.

Midoriya is quirkless. Markless. He has no right to speak to him like this.

Bakugou bats away the hand reaching out for him.

 **ooo**

Midoriya cries. Thick marbles falling from his eyes, getting caught in his lashes and sprinkling across his cheek. His fists are up. He's not going to back down. They have been doing this for years. Ever since Bakugou developed his amazing quirk they have been fighting like this. It's just who they are.

"Leave me alone, Kacchan," the small boy whimpers. He sniffles, trying to blink through the curtain blurring his vision.

But how could Bakugou leave him alone? It's not his fault that Midoriya is so abundantly useless. He is blessed with nothing.

The two boys grow up with their lives already destined. Bakugou will become a professional hero in the future. He will surpass All Might!

And Midoriya will always be his failed self.

The nature of his quirk is so impressive that Bakugou forgets about the absence of a name across his skin. Sometimes, there is something like insecurity gnawing at his heart. The worry that, maybe, there isn't anyone destined to be his soulmate. But he taught himself to hush those doubtful voices. What does it matter? He has his quirk. He doesn't need anyone. All those people that doubted the magnificence of his nature. Bakugou didn't need any of them! And he never will.

Bakugou doesn't need another person to be a sublime masterpiece.

 **ooo**

It's his thirteenth birthday. Bakugou's mother wakes to frantic howls. She tumbles down the hall, still clad in her nightgown, following the voice. Her child is standing in the bathroom, furiously scrubbing at the skin of his wrist.

Tears of desperation are biting at his eyes. The skin on his arm is flaring in a furious scarlet.

"It's not coming off," Bakugou presses between tightly gritted teeth. He stares at the letters, too stubborn to be washed away, like they are burnt into his skin. A brand. A stigma. "It's not coming off! Fuck, why isn't is coming off?"

He knows the name gracing his wrist.

He looks at the letters, vision blurred by tears, and sees a tangled mess of green. A pair of bright, defiant eyes.

 _Midoriya Izuku_.


	2. Chapter 2

"Did I ever tell you that when you were born, you refused to cry? The doctors thought you might be dead, but you weren't. You just didn't want to cry. And you were so small! Such a small boy. I cradled you in my arms, this tiny, tiny, tiny bundle. You still didn't cry, but when I looked at you, and you looked at me, you smiled. Doesn't that sound like such a nice story, Izuku?"

She draws her fingers through the boy's thick curls, soft like his father's. Izuku doesn't respond, his face still buried in her lavender sweater, while fresh tears begin to stain the fabric a deeper shade.

"Don't worry, baby," his mother soothes, "you can cry now. It's okay to cry."

 **ooo**

His eyes are puffy and Izuku is too young, too fragile, to bare the weight of it. He lets his fingers brush over the name imprinted on his skin, feeling the light bumps against the tips, feeling how his heart skips a beat.

"We could cover it up," his mother proposes in her quiet voice. "Until you feel, well, better about it."

At first, she tried to cheer him up.

 _But Katsuki is your friend, isn't he? Aren't you happy?_

He is happy, and at the same time he is devastated. Izuku didn't expect anything of his mark. It took so long to appear on his skin, dark letters standing sharp against his complexion that doesn't match that of Kacchan at all. He just knows he didn't expect _this_.

The morning he woke to a light prickle on his skin, the sun had managed to seep through the spaces between his curtains, warming rays falling directly onto his arm. Vision still blurred by sleep's embrace he blinked at the odd blotches on his wrist, before they began to shape a familiar name. He stared at the picture for a moment, the way the dark of the letters seemed to swallow the light that fell unto them, and then they blurred yet again, this time due to his own tears.

His young heart was ripped apart right in that moment.

He wept, wheezed, choked through the tears staining his cheeks and pillow, but it all happened silently. When he wasn't showing up for breakfast, his mother came into his room, telling him, that, Izuku, it's time to get up.

She stared at her child, blinking at her through tears collecting in his dark lashes, a name falling in broken chords from his lips.

"Kacchan," he whispered.

Izuku is too young, too fragile, and he doesn't want to bare the weight of this.

 **ooo**

The way to school is short, and Izuku needs more time. But, deep down he knows the universe could never offer him enough time to be prepared for what is to come. He grasps the straps of his bag, so heavy today, and steps into class. The letters on his skin are burning. Silently, he shuffles over to his seat, avoiding to glance at the other students while they talk and laugh and most of them don't know their soulmate yet. They puzzle over who it could be, what do they look like, when will they meet.

How mundane.

For once, Izuku wishes he was as simple as them.

But nothing is simple about his life, is it? From his double-jointed toe to the way his father slammed the door the last time he was home, nothing is meant to be simple.

No, what Izuku wants to be is _right_.

He wants to fit in, not stand out in the worst way possible. He wants to be great, and yet, he is not.

Izuku is thirteen and he buries his round face in his hands, drowning out the noises surrounding him, buzzing, straining. Until he hears a new sound; a familiar voice, soaring over the heads of the others to him like a wild beast's roar. His muscles tense, his system jumps to alert, and then he sees Bakugou, the air around him almost fizzling as he makes his way through the astonished crowd.

No, he tears through it.

"You!" he howls, arm darting out, fingers formed to a claw. They grasp the front of Izuku's shirt, tangling in them, tearing.

Izuku is silent. He doesn't try to fight off the hands that shove him away from his seat until his back painfully collides with the window sill, arching as Bakugou keeps pushing him.

"You!" he spits between tightly gritted teeth. Izuku stares at him, mouth agape in shock, head empty of any words. On his own, his eyes wander over the fuming boy's frame, dropping until he looks at a slim wrist.

Dark letters etching across soft skin, swallowing the blue of tender veins beneath.

Before his brain can catch up and tell him to stop, Izuku moves, fingers closing around his own name.

"Kacchan," he manages out from numb lips, and there it is again, the choking, the curtain of tears veiling his eyes.

But the blonde boy shakes his head, shakes it so hard his stubbornly spiky hair flies in each direction.

"No!" he howls at the top of his lungs. "No, no, no, no, _no_! I refuse you, Midoriya! You hear me _? I refuse you!_ "

"But, Kacchan –," the other boy whispers. His voice breaks, the words die before they can sprout from his mouth.

"How can you do this to me, Deku?" Bakugou wails, and now there are hot tears running over his cheeks. "I hate you! I refuse you! I hate you!"

Steam begins to rise from his palms, and Izuku wishes for him to just blow his body to bits, right in this classroom.

They're just kids. This shouldn't be happening.

Bakugou screams and hollers, scratching and biting as the agitated teacher drags him off the other boy. It needs two more teachers to catch his flailing limbs. Izuku watches as they carry the blonde out of the classroom, his violent howls echoing in the hallway, fading into distance.

He is left standing among the silent students.

Izuku's head drops. Against his fingertips, he still feels the imprint of his letters.

 **ooo**

They say time heals all wounds.

Clearly, the person who said that didn't know the first thing about how deep the gashes run when Bakugou Katsuki strikes. It's terrible, and Bakugou is terrible, and his wrath is even worse. Izuku wishes he could just give up on wishing for things to change. But how do you defy the universe? How do you reach up to the stars and tell them, no, they are wrong, and this isn't meant to be?

What can you expect when you shout your heart out through your throat and into the void?

Will the void return it on tender palms, begging you to take it back?

There is nothing tender about Bakugou. He is all hard edges, has always been. Words cutting like a blade's knife and it's aiming for Izuku's heart.

How can such a young boy be so terrible?

Sometimes, Izuku comes home with bruises. That has happened before, but lately, Bakugou puts all his might into each blow. Like he could somehow cut those invisible strings connecting them by beating on Izuku's arms, cheeks, shoulders.

Izuku still fights him. He puts up his fists, cries with everything his lungs are able to give, but at the end of the day he still tastes blood and dust in the back of his throat.

His mother fixes him up every time, cooing soft words to him.

Izuku is only thirteen, but he knows there are wounds her brightly colored band-aids can't fix. The damage is too great, stretching from one corner of his heart to the next, leaving a jagged mark along its way.

"Why doesn't he want me?" Izuku asks, voice hoarse, as he sits inside the kitchen, his mother gently kissing a scratch on his hand.

She looks up, and Izuku sees his own bitterness mirrored in her eyes.

"I don't know, baby," she says, carefully, but she didn't need to be so tender. Izuku knows, there is no answer to this, this universe-defying, star-scraping natural disaster that is Bakugou Katsuki.

 **ooo**

It's one day before his fourteenth birthday, and Izuku comes home with a shiner standing proudly against his skin.

His mother is sitting on her bed, crying.

"Mom?" he begins, his small voice strangely prominent inside the silent apartment.

His mother's head jerks up, and her eyes land on the boy standing in the doorframe. There is a tissue clutched between her fragile hands, but she quickly stuffs it into the pocket of her pastel sweater, standing up hurriedly.

"Izuku," she says and her lips pull into a warm smile. "You're back early. Did anything happen?"

The boy shakes his head. "No, it's the same time as usual."

"O-oh? Really? My, I must have lost track of time. Silly me! Now, take off your jacket, I'll make you something to eat."

She ushers him out of the door, padding through the hallway in her blue slippers, as Izuku stays behind.

There is a knife stuck inside his ribcage, and it punctures his heart every time he breathes in. It's leaking, lungs overflowing and it feels like he's drowning, standing before his mother's room in a jacket that is twice his size because nothing ever seems to fit him.

He wants to know why his mother was crying. But at the same time, the brittle path along the edges of his young heart is begging him not to ask.

Izuku closes his burning eyes, breathes in.

He is drowning.


End file.
